


Of Lions and Men

by motherlovebone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amnesia, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Personal Growth, Post-War, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:08:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27824275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherlovebone/pseuds/motherlovebone
Summary: Harry cannot remember the last four years of his life.Harry is engaged to Draco Malfoy.Harry should be upset about this.Right?Harry is not upset about this.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

Despite what many people may think, not all Gryffindors have pride. The house itself is seen as a fountain of prideful young lions, eager to pounce on others in the name of bravery. Some lions, however, are really not lions at all.  


Harry liked to think of himself as a jellyfish. He is quite used to the lack of control over his own life. Had he been given control, Harry might have refrained from living in a cupboard underneath the stairs. He might have made friends with Hufflepuffs, or become top of class in potions. He might have even avoided the whole dead-then-reincarnated situation. But, like a jellyfish, Harry moves in the direction life pushes him towards. As Vernon had once said to Dudley when he had begun boxing, “You have to roll with the punches”. Dudley never quite took to that bit of advice, but it easily summarizes the way Harry floats through life. And if Harry happens to float into a situation where he is engaged to Draco Malfoy, his once sworn enemy… It would be less of a shock if he could remember exactly how they had ended up engaged, or why he cannot remember the last four years, but he would just have to roll with the punches dealt to him by life.  


Pity life has a wicked right hook.


	2. Harry's Grim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the hits! I really appreciate it. This is my first time writing, so the chapters won't be super long, but I hope to update it pretty often. Thanks to my beta, @juniorvarsitys for all her support!!

Harry woke up in a hospital. At least, he was quite certain it was a hospital. After all, he had been in quite a few. The decor was not terrible, after all, there was some blues on the covers of his bed and the walls. The floor tiles were not ugly, in the way that a pug is not ugly. You just assume it was designed to look the way it does, making the inherent ugliness acceptable. Unfortunately, despite the wishes of whomever decorated the room, the tiny potted plant in the corner couldn’t detract from the sterile air in the room, with the faint minty smell of cleaning charms.

It was a smell Harry had encountered quite often, one that only brought up memories of sickness and nausea. So… not an especially pleasant smell for him. Not at all in fact. However, Harry knew this was a necessary evil. Like so many things in his life, he would simply have to put up with it.

Harry was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of muted, concerned voices from outside his door. He could not quite make out the words, but he knew that concerned voices outside one’s hospital door was not generally a good omen. Harry smiled softly to himself, entertaining the idea that the nurses would come in to tell him that he was actually doing well and was in perfect health.

A glint of metal in the corner of his eye drew Harry’s attention. He glanced over to his bedside table, a small drab little thing with a couple conjured flowers in a vase perched on top. Conjured flowers always had an unnatural vibrance to them, looking simultaneously pretty and fake. They reminded Harry of Petunia’s garden. And Petunia herself. All dolled up to hide the fact that there is nothing of actual substance within.

Next to the vase was a ring, which Harry squinted at in confusion. He leaned over to pick it up, hovering for just a moment to debate the likelihood that this mysterious ring held curses which sought to off him in a year’s time. For a moment, he was reminded of Dumbledore’s curse in the last year of his life. However, unlike Dumbledore, Harry was not in a derelict shack in the middle of nowhere, but in a hospital, where it was literally the job of the people nearby to assist him should he be cursed. Mind decided, Harry promptly picked the ring to examine it.

It was an elegant, delicate-looking thing, likely worth more than Harry himself by the looks of it. It was not bejewelled, but engraved with a slanted script. Had Harry been a Ravenclaw, he might have put effort into reading the sinuous text out of desire for knowledge regarding his situation. However, Harry was not a Ravenclaw, and did not often read, even when the text was in a straightforward font rather than sloping squiggles that were, quite frankly, illegible. Harry had the passing thought that anyone who would choose such a florid font must be a pompous twat. He set the ring back on the table, not bothering to discern the engraving, just in time for the door to his hospital room to open.

A stout nurse bustled in, pausing just a moment to catch Harry awake and setting the ring back onto the table.

“Oh, you can put that back on, dear, if you’d like,” she said in a strong Cockney accent, glancing over at the parchment and dictating quill hovering next to her as she strode across the room to Harry’s bedside.

Harry frowned, feeling lost. “Put it on? What for?”

Finally, she looked him in the eye, and without a single care as to how her words might render Harry completely incapable of coherent thought, spoke with shocking bluntness.

“Well, it is yours, isn’t it? Quite nice, too. Read about it in the Prophet, they just went on and on about it, you’d think it was Merlin’s own engagement ring.”

Harry had a nagging feeling that he was missing some crucial information here.

* * *

Harry was, in fact, missing some crucial information here. Quite a bit of crucial information, it turns out.

Four years. Harry was missing the last four years of his life. He was engaged to a man, one he cannot seem to remember. He and Ginny had split up, Teddy was just starting school, and Harry could not remember a second of it.

Of course, there were lots of placating words fed to him by the nurses. They told him of the medical explanations behind his sudden amnesia, all very well reasoned and logical. Harry was not feeling well reasoned and logical, nor did he understand the complex Arithmancy behind his sudden condition. He did, after all, take Divination in third year rather than Arithmancy. But while he is not well informed on the convoluted mathematical nature of magic itself, he did happen to know a thing or two about his own destiny.

Despite Professor Trelawney’s interminable and nonsensical class, Harry did remember that he had The Grim in his teacup, and was hence destined to have bad luck. And nothing says bad luck like losing four years of your life and waking up engaged to a man you can’t remember.

It is hard to roll with the punches when you can’t remember what the punches are, but Harry would just have to make do. Harry would soon discover that rolling was much easier before Draco _bloody_ Malfoy walked in.


End file.
